NOT the Majority Opinion

~~~ Η «ελληνική πραγματικότητα» υπάρχει μόνο στο μυαλό εκείνων που δεν μπόρεσαν (ή δεν ήθελαν;) ποτέ να ξεφύγουν από αυτήν ~~~

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Wendelin Werner from University of Paris-Sud and Andrei Okounkov of UC Berkeley, win this year's Fields Medal

A Probabilist wins the Fields Medal for the first time! (I think). The spotlight, though, will be on Grigory Perelman who refused it. (The other winners are Andrei Okounkov of the University of California, Berkeley (http://math.berkeley.edu/~okounkov), Terence Tao from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Wendelin Werner of the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France).

August 22, 2006 8:00 AM PDT

Grigory Perelman, the reclusive Russian mathematician who may have proved the elusive Poincaré Conjecture, was awarded with a 2006 Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians--and he turned it down, according to Nature.

Three other mathematicians--Princeton University's Andre Okounkov, UCLA's Terence Tao, and Wendelin Werner from France's University of Paris-Sud--were honored with this year's Fields Medal, considered by many to be mathematics' equivalent of the Nobel Prize. All three of them were present at the ceremony in Madrid to accept their awards.

According to the International Mathematical Union, a Fields Medal has never been turned down before.

Perelman, who reportedly lives with his mother in St. Petersburg, will be eligible for a $1 million Millennium Prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute if he is indeed determined to have proved the Poincaré Conjecture, a seemingly simple problem dealing with three-dimensional spheres. No word as to whether or not he 'll accept that one.

http://news.com.com/2061-11128_3-6108180.html

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